The Men Who Would Be Kings by SurgicalSteel

Chapter 1

Read Chapter 1

Avareth closed her eyes and allowed her forehead to hit the ledger on her desk with a thump, willing the numbers to change.

She knew they wouldn’t. Not for the first time, she was glad that she and her brother had been what many in the Free Port of Belfalas had labeled as ‘overly cautious’ with the family business dealings, overly frugal with their funds, and had made certain that their warehouse was up on the bluff rather than immediately adjacent to the docks.

It had been an abysmal year. The initial blow to the region had likely been the worst – the storms that had seemed to come out of a clear blue sky and had flooded the town and washed most of the beach right out to sea along with the homes, shops, docks, and warehouses that had once stood there, and several families had lost fishing boats. They were damned lucky that their ships had been in harbors apparently unaffected by the storms. The months that had followed – well, it was often warm enough on the coast of Belfalas that it would rain in the afternoon. That was nothing new. Raining for a week at a time? That was unusual, and it hadn’t been pleasant light rains, either, but hard, drenching rains that washed away even more of the coast. The cooler and rainier than usual summer had given way to a damn cold winter and the first snowfall in Belfalas in fifteen years.

“The numbers that bad?” her brother said from behind her.

“They could be worse, Osdil,” she replied, raising her head from the desk. “We’ve got enough funds and supplies to last us through ‘til next autumn, if necessary – and if we had to, we could go back to fishing and trading with that friend of yours for vegetables from his gardens, I suppose. Well, we could do that if the weather’s good enough for him to actually grow anything this year,” she added.

Osdil gave her a wry grin at that. “Seems to be improving slowly,” he said.

Avareth shrugged. “Seemed fine until that one storm last summer,” she said. “Another summer like that and we might as well head for Pelargir or Umbar.”

“Umbar’s warmer,” Osdil said with another grin.

“More trade opportunities in Pelargir,” Avareth returned, and Osdil answered with a grunt of agreement. There was one family in Umbar that seemed to control access to most of the seafaring trade in and out of the city – and Osdil had friendly enough relations with them as trading partners, but he didn’t care to enter into direct competition with them. People who entered into direct competition with that family had the unfortunate habit of disappearing. The alternatives of attempting to establish trade with desert tribes or giving up trade and going back to fishing – or worse, farming – were unpalatable, to say the least. The farmlands around Umbar were something of a miracle of engineering given the climate, and Avareth had a great deal of respect for the people who somehow managed to turn desert into cultivated land. That didn’t mean that she wanted to live or work on them.

“There are those folks who came into Pelargir after the storms last summer,” Osdil said.

Avareth shrugged at that. Five ships had gone up the Anduin, and they’d clearly been of Númenórean origin, and they’d promptly started cutting down trees and quarrying stone and building a city on the Anduin upstream from Pelargir. Not on the banks; that would have made too much sense. No, from the size of the platforms they were building, they clearly meant to build something right there on the river itself, which would limit the size of the ships that could go upstream even more than Rauros Falls already had. “I don’t trust them,” she said.

“You don’t know them,” Osdil replied. “We could at least get to know them. There are enough of them there that we should at least…”

Avareth shook her head. They’d had the argument more than once – she truly didn’t trust the motives of anyone who came from Númenor itself these days, not since…

“Not talking to these people won’t bring Rosfin back,” Osdil said.

“You’d best shut your mouth about Rosfin,” Avareth said, letting her head hit the desk with another soft thud. Rosfin – he’d had the sweetest voice and a far kinder heart than Avareth, and he’d promised that when he returned from that last voyage he made that he’d marry her. Someone had to trade with the people of Andúnië, he’d said. They shouldn’t be cut off entirely, and the lords of Andúnië could only sail to so many places at once. Someone should make certain that they knew there were parts of Middle Earth that would welcome them.

He wanted to help them, and what did they do? she thought. She’d only heard that he’d been taken by the King’s Men, but she had a sneaking suspicion that meant he’d been killed and it truly wouldn’t surprise her if the damned ‘Faithful’ as they called themselves had let him be taken rather than one of their own or even handed him over to save one of their own. Not that they’d ever admit that, no. They were the Númenóreans faithful to their friendship with the elves, the ones who resisted the evil of the King’s Men…

The ones too stupid to get the hell out of Númenor and let the King’s Men prey on one another, she thought sourly, aware that she wasn’t being fair and that it truly was difficult to uproot an entire family and resettle them in a new homeland. She’d read the records regarding how the Free Port came to be founded. She knew.

She simply wasn’t interested in being fair, that was all.

The ‘King’s Men’ would rip your heart out as an offering to Morgoth and the ‘Faithful’ would stand by and let it happen, and Avareth had no use for any of them. Well, perhaps they’d be useful as landfill, to help rebuild the coastline.

“We both know we need the funds too badly to not talk to them,” Osdil said.

Avareth turned her head to one side, feeling her lips twist, and then shook her head slightly. “I suppose we can talk to them,” she said.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Avareth began regretting the decision to talk to these people almost as soon as she and Osdil were brought into one of the few half-completed houses in what was clearly planned to be a large city. The people out in what passed for streets – well, there were clearly opportunities there. Food, clothing, building supplies, farming supplies, even weapons, they would all be needed, and would bring in a welcome influx of funds. Osdil had grinned at her as they were brought into that half-completed house and Avareth had begun calculating in her mind just how much of an advance they might be able to get if they promised a few luxuries like spices from Far Harad in addition to the necessities.

The wall-hangings on the room they were brought into, though – those had them exchanging puzzled looks with one another. The White Tree – hadn’t Nimloth been uprooted and burned? The stars above the Tree – well, she had no idea what they meant. The crown, though – the meaning of the crown was obvious enough.

Who on earth would use the Tree and a crown? she mouthed to Osdil.

I’m betting Faithful. Andúnië, Osdil mouthed back, and Avareth could feel her eyes rolling at that.

She nodded and mouthed back,I’m betting Zamîn will be interested.

Osdil nodded again. Zamîn had resigned as one of the Judges of Umbar some years previously and had often been heard to observe that trade had a far higher profit to headache ratio than politics had and that anyone suggesting she should attempt to be elected to that office again would be dangled by their entrails from the highest yardarm on her ship – but if someone from Andúnië actually had the coronin to attempt to claim kingship here in Middle Earth?

I wonder what that information will be worth to Zamîn, Avareth thought idly, but as the door opened and two men entered the room, both wearing circlets, she and Osdil turned to look at one another again. Did they intend some sort of duumvirate, as the people of Umbar had? It made more sense as a form of rule than a single king did to Avareth, one might balance out the worst offenses of the other. But the circlets – did they intend handing kingship down to their sons? And if they did…

Avareth let her mind wander around whether having the heads of prominent families select one’s leaders as they did in Umbar or setting up an inherited monarchy was a better form of government as the dark haired man introduced himself and the golden-haired man with him as Isildur and Anárion, and she realized she’d actually said what she was thinking aloud as both turned to stare at her.

“You’ll forgive my sister,” Osdil said quickly, nudging her with his elbow.

“I understand her surprise,” Isildur said. “I simply don’t understand why one would swear by the female parts of a green parrot – that is what you said, isn’t it?”

Avareth nodded. “My apologies, sir…”

“‘Your Majesty’ would be appropriate when addressing a king,” Anárion said.

“King of what?” Avareth snapped. “King of slabs of stone in the middle of the Anduin? Which you’re making more difficult to navigate and hampering trade…”

“Kings of Gondor,” Anárion said. “If I can show you on a map…”

Isildur was remaining notably quiet as Anárion spoke with her, and wasn’t he supposed to be the older brother? And why in heaven’s name was he looking at her that way? But Anárion was spreading out a map and describing the boundaries of this new kingdom, and of something called ‘Arnor’ in the north – and she supposed ‘high-land’ or ‘king’s land’ and ‘stone-land’ weren’t terribly creative names, but they were descriptive… and then she realized.

“We’re a Free Port in Belfalas,” Avareth said. “You can’t just come in and take over, we’ve been there since the days of Tar-Ancalimë. Your namesake, Tar-Anárion, he granted us our status as an autonomous colony. You can’t just…”

“Our father, as High King…” Isildur began.

“High King?” Avareth said and spat on the ground.

“Avareth,” her brother hissed.

“High King of my arse, perhaps,” Avareth said. “Has anyone bothered to inform Umbar? I’m certain the descendants of Princess Quindelótë…”

“Who left Númenor of her own free will and renounced the Heirship,” Anárion said. “As descendants of Silmarien…”

“Who never had a right to the crown?” Avareth said.

Isildur coughed, covering his mouth with his hand, but his eyes glittered as if he wanted desperately to laugh. “And you, standing there like a thenluis, perfectly aware of how shaky your claim is and letting your brother argue it anyway…”

Isildur and Anárion both blinked and scrunched their eyebrows together at that, and exchanged a few words in puzzled-sounding Quenya that she didn’t understand, and so she finished with another of her favorite phrases and walked out of the room.

“Did she just call us stemless butterflies?” she heard Anárion say. “And called you a short ringlet before that?”

She knew she’d embarrassed Osdil and had possibly ruined any chances of establishing trade with these men who wanted to claim kingship over them – but for the love of all that was holy, they didn’t need a king. They’d been doing perfectly well in Belfalas without any sort of direct authority from the Kings of Númenor or the Judges of Umbar for close to two thousand years. They traded. If they had no official ruler – who cared? Everyone knew who ran things, everyone knew who you needed to speak with to get things done. The damned Faithful trying to set up a kingship…

“I explained to your brother that I actually do enjoy the company of women and my ‘stem’ is still very much attached,” Isildur’s voice came from behind her.

Avareth spat again, hitting the river underneath the platforms that might someday be streets. “Doesn’t make you less of a thenluis,” she said.

“He explained that your betrothed…”

“I don’t want to talk about my betrothed with anyone,” Avareth said.

“We all left loved ones in Númenor,” Isildur said quietly.

Avareth snorted.

“Anárion would just as soon pitch you and your brother into the river, but I rather think we might need you and your ‘Free Port,’” Isildur said. “You know the lay of the land, the people…”

“Your people felling trees and quarrying stone is going to annoy the Drúedain and building across the Anduin is going to anger trading partners. You’ve upset things, and I wish to the stars above that you’d just go back to Númenor...”

Isildur cut her off mid-sentence. “We can’t do that.”

“Not so hard,” Avareth said. “Get back in your damn ships and...”

“Númenor is no more,” Isildur said. “Ar-Pharazôn chose – was urged by the Deceiver – to invade Valinor. The Valar destroyed Númenor in retaliation...”

Well, Avareth thought that Zamîn might have different notions about whatever had happened to Númenor – but the sinking of the entire island beneath the waves, it might explain the waves that had washed the shore away.

“We can’t go back,” Isildur said. “We have no choice but to stay, to create new homes...”

Avareth snorted at that. “New homes,” she said.

“In both mountain ranges,” Isildur said pointing to the Ered Nimrais and the Ephel Duath.

“Out of your damned mind building that close to Mordor,” Avareth said.

“Someone has to watch the Deceiver,” Isildur replied. “We – my brother and I – we’re not asking your settlement to give up its autonomy. It might be useful to occasionally... how should I say this?”

“Have plausible deniability,” Avareth said, and at Isildur’s startled look, she added, “A friend of mine used to be one of the Judges of Umbar. Zamîn’s one of those maligned descendants of Quindelótë.”

“We won’t be able to survive without trading partners,” Isildur said. “And you...”

“Neither will we,” Avareth said. “You’ll let us retain autonomy...”

“And you’ll back our claim to the kingship,” Isildur said.

It left a bit of a bad taste in her mouth, but she was reasonably certain that there was more profit to be made here than there was in aligning with Umbar. They’d end up as subjects or as shark food, and neither was appealing.

She thought Zamîn would understand.

“We’ll let our brothers keep arguing the details for a bit?” Avareth said. “But you’ll only trade through us and through Pelargir, at least down here in Ondor...”

“Gondor,” Isildur corrected her.

“Whichever,” Avareth said. “You won’t attempt to go around us?”

“Through the desert or through Mordor? Not likely,” Isildur said.

“And you won’t tax us?” Avareth said.

Isildur winced at that, but nodded.

He must be desperate for someone to support them, Avareth realized, and then she spat in her hand and held it out to him. After a moment, Isildur also spit in his hand and clasped it to hers.

“Done then?” Isildur said.

“Done, then. Let our brothers argue a bit longer, though. They’ll come to the same agreement,” Avareth said, and then added, “Your Majesty.”

“You don’t have to call me...”

“I’ll still think of you as the stupid thenluis who’s making rude gestures at Mordor, though,” Avareth said, and Isildur laughed.

It was stupid, really – but if it gained them a guaranteed trading partner and the income that went along with that?

She’d call him whatever he wanted if it brought money into their coffers again.

Friendship was friendship – but business, after all, was business.

---

Chapter End Notes

Thenluis roughly translates from Sindarin as ‘short curlies.’ I was recently reminded of the Spanish epithet ‘pendejo’ which literally means ‘pubic hair,’ but is used more like we use ‘jackass’ in English.

A native Spanish speaking attending of mine back in my days of indentured servitude (i.e. residency and fellowship) used to swear by ‘La concha de la verde lora,’ which is ‘the green parrot’s c*nt,’ and called my male colleagues ‘mariposas sin pijas’ which is literally ‘prickless butterflies,’ but really sort of means ‘prickless queers.’ He had many other interesting phrases as well, and inspired Avareth's colorful use of language. ;)